Oh, goodness, I should bullet-point these...
(1) A speaker from the lectern once claimed that Neil Sedaka's hit song "Bad Blood" was about gonorrhea. Neil Sedaka.
(2) My first big music hero as a kid was John Denver. My mother heard the oft-repeated urban legend that in concert once, John Denver asked anyone who was a Jehovah's Witness to leave the theater. The more likely possibility is that Denver was about to play a medley of patriotic songs, and suggested that "Those of you who are JWs might not like this next set... you might want to go to the bathroom or get some refreshments right now."
(3) My mother got mad at my hanging up a poster of the Commodores in my bedroom, calling them "adulters, drug users and alcoholics." She made roughly the same disparaging remarks about ELO, except they were also "demonized."
(4) My mother once ripped up the album cover for Bruce Springsteen's album "The River." She claimed Bruce "looked demonized" --
Yeah, get out the split pea soup, I'm feelin' all Linda Blair over here.
(5) Same thing with Steely Dan, in the inner sleeve for their first greatest hits anthology, called "Gold." Steely Dan just look bored, surly, only possibly stoned. A great argument commenced about this, in which my father (not a JW) finally decided he'd listen to the entire album to verify if there was anything offensive on it. He found one: In "Show BIz Kids" they use the word "fuck." The album wasn't thrown away, but they called a ban on future music purchases, which I believe lasted a month.
Amusing side note: In 2006 I interviewed Donald Fagen of Steely Dan for my music writing job. I was so tempted to tell him about this, and ask him if he'd ever been demonically possessed, but I chickened out.
I so hope I get the chance to interview Bruce someday -- "Say, Bruce, don't take this personally, but my mom thought you were demonically possessed in the 80's. Were you?"
(6) My mom thought punk rock was evil because she saw Gilda Radner doing a parody of punk rock on Saturday Night Live.
(7) In 1977 my mom read an article in Time magazine about Billy Joel, in which they quoted lyrics from his then-current song "Only the Good Die Young," which is roughly about an attempt to deflower a Catholic girl. I believe they quoted the line "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/The sinners are much more fun." My mother asked me if I had any Billy Joel albums; I didn't at the time. She said, "Good. Don't buy any." Since I was a kid piano player, I wound up buying quite a few. I believe she'd forgotten all about the Time magazine article. (My tastes have changed, though, and now it's not like keeping your kid away from Billy Joel is a bad thing...)
(8) Yeah, all the KISS stuff, the AC/DC stuff too. JW's are curiously quite eager to cite urban legend as documented fact, even if they originated from bible-thumpers in completely different religions, as those two rumors did.
(9) When I was in high school I appeared in our drama department's production of "The Sound of Music." It ticked mom off that I had to miss some meetings to make rehearsals. Her exact words: "It's a stupid show! It's got all those Catholics in it!"
(10) The last thing that bugged her was when I got Tom Waits' "Heartattack And Vine" album, in which there's a line where Tom signs "I spent fifteen dollars on a prostitute, with too much makeup and a broken shoe." She overheard my playing this. She smirked about it. I think by that time I'd left the religion, and there was nothing she could really do about it.
Yep, music is my life.
--P
